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Hyundai will start building Santa Fe Sport crossover vehicles at its Montgomery assembly plant this summer, part of a push by the automaker to gain a better foothold in an SUV-hungry market.

The company doesn’t expect to hire more workers, but it’s spending $52 million on tooling and modifications to add the ability to build the Santa Fe Sport here. That means Alabama workers will build fewer of the company’s top-selling cars — the Sonata and Elantra sedans — in order to roll out more of the crossover vehicle.

Hyundai’s North American sales have grown for six straight years, but monthly sales fell in December while much of the industry was experiencing a boom thanks to unprecedented demand for trucks, SUVs and crossovers. Falling gas prices helped to fuel that trend.

At 13.9 percent market share, the small SUV segment is now the largest category of vehicles in the U.S., trailed by small cars and midsize cars at 13.7 percent each, according to Kelley Blue Book.

“There's no end in sight to those trends,” AutoTrader.com analyst Michelle Krebs told USA Today. “You're going to hear the same broken record next year.”

The company has ridden the popularity of its two Montgomery-made sedans to most of that annual growth in recent years, and 2015 was no exception. Sonatas and Elantras accounted for nearly 440,000 of the about 725,000 vehicles Hyundai sold in North America last year.

Now, it’s betting more of the company’s future growth on the Santa Fe, which was the company’s No. 3 seller each of the past two years. Hyundai said annual production targets for each of the three vehicles will be revealed later.

HMMA already made engines for the Santa Fe Sport and shipped them to Georgia, where the vehicles are assembled.

“The new production will help us meet the growing demand for one of our most popular products,” Hyundai Motor America President and CEO Dave Zuchowski said.

Zuchowski and other company leaders said last year that they were looking at several options for gaining traction in the hot SUV and crossover market, including adding capacity by building new facilities.

While new facilities weren’t a part of Thursday’s announcement, Alabama Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield said the move is a sign of Hyundai’s confidence in the plant and its workers.

“They didn’t have to do this here,” Canfield said. “They could have done it in Georgia, but they didn’t.”

USA Today contributed to this report.

The Santa Fe crossover was Hyundai's No. 3 best-selling vehicle in North America last year.(Photo: Contributed)